Trivia

1001 Video Games

Copy protection

Before releasing this game, Codemasters announced that they would be using a new copy protection technology called FADE which should make the game unplayable after a while if run off a copy. It is unknown whether that technology really worked or not as there were many bugs in the game which caused the game to be unplayable even with original CDs.

Demo

Just one week after it was online, the demo has been downloaded over a million times.

Development

Operation Flashpoint survived bouncing between 3 different publishers during its development. Originally the game was to be published by Interactive Magic, then Ubi Soft, and finally Codemasters.

Franchise

After the success of Operation Flashpoint, publisher Codemasters bought the rights to the brand name. That's why the second game of the development team was released under the title ArmA: Combat Operations and Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising was developed by a Codemasters team on site in England.

Military

Operation Flashpoint was regarded to be so accurate that its developers produced the Virtual Battlespace Systems 1 (VBS1) - a version of the Operation Flashpoint engine for use by the military for training purposes. The first military customer for VBS1 was the United States Marine Corps. Its users today include the defence forces of Australia, Canada, Israel, New Zealand, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States.

References

Codemasters has confessed that many of the characters within Operation Flashpoint are based on personnel within the company. The firm's chairman Jim Darling, for example, appears within the game as the evil General Vasilli, while Codemasters' UK MP James Plaskitt also makes an appearance. (Source: MCV, Friday, July 20 2001)

Scenario

The islands featured in the game are based on real world locations. A forum competition was held to discover if anyone could figure out the exact locations.